


Presents

by Jayne L (JayneL)



Category: Being Erica
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-01-07
Updated: 2009-01-07
Packaged: 2017-10-06 02:06:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/48538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JayneL/pseuds/Jayne%20L
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Of all the bad decisions Erica's made in her life and wishes she could reverse, kissing her therapist is at the very top of the list.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Presents

**Author's Note:**

> Written pretty immediately after the pilot. Totally jossed by the rest of the season. :)

Of all the many, many bad decisions Erica's made in her life and wishes she could reverse, kissing her therapist is now at the very top of the list.

"Oh God," she says, lurching backwards and putting her hands over her mouth as if afraid she'll kiss him again if there's nothing in the way. "I am so sorry. I didn't mean--I mean, I wasn't thinking, and it just--I can't believe--oh _God_\--"

Doctor Tom just stands there, watching her, completely unruffled despite the red smear of her lipstick on his mouth. "Interesting," he says, and if Erica didn't have to cringe behind her chair in mortification right now, she'd be really angry at the detached, oh-so-amused fascination in his voice. "Why did you do that, Erica?"

"I don't know!" She shrugs with her whole body, her hands flailing through the air before smacking down at her sides again. "I have _no idea_. I mean, we've talked about my bad decision-making abilities, but this? _Kissing_\--" She can't even look right at him, turns her head to give the freaky-looking masks on his wall some serious study. "That's one of the rare few things I really, seriously thought I was too smart to ever, *ever* do. I mean, *seriously*, this is guest-on-Doctor Phil-level stupidity, here, and I could always take comfort in knowing that at least my impulse control wasn't as bad as those people's. Until now, apparently. Oh, _God_."

"'No new thing has ever arisen, or can arise, save out of the impulse of the male upon the female, the female upon the male.' D.H. Lawrence." It's enough to get her to glare at him--well, more accurately, at Freud, hanging all massive and judgmental on the wall behind him. In return, he smiles, pulls out a handkerchief, wipes the lipstick fastidiously from his mouth. "You know, this is actually a very good opportunity," he continues, refolding the handkerchief and tucking it back into his jacket pocket. "The consequences of your decision to kiss me are unfolding right now, in the present moment. Because of this, a successful examination of this choice lies not in the past, but awaits us in the immediate future."

Erica nods. "Yeah. Sure. Or, you can send me back to when I walked into your office and I can go through this whole session without ki-kissing you at all."

It's because she's not looking squarely at him, she thinks; she can't really see his face clearly while staring fixedly at his right elbow, so she must have imagined that look of disappointment. "Are you sure that's what you want to do? Go back and do things over?"

"Yes." She nods again, much more vehemently this time. "That is what I want to do, because you're my _therapist_, this is _wrong_, and I need to fix it. I do, because eventually I'm going to have to look you in the eye again, and I won't be able to do that unless I've never kissed you." She musters up the courage to raise her gaze to his chin--which, unfortunately, gives her a crystal-clear view of his Adam's apple as he swallows, which reminds her that she'd put her hand alongside his throat during the kiss, which--now that she's thinking about it--conjures up the vivid memory of his skin, warm and whiskery under her fingertips, and oh _God_. Feeling her face heat with renewed humiliation, she closes her eyes tight and says, firmly, "Please."

She hears him say, "All right, then," and is as overwhelmed with relief as she is by the freezing cold rush of going back.

* * *

Halfway through her session redux, Doctor Tom says, "I think it's time for us to take a look at your regrets about your brother," and Erica remembers why she kissed him in the first place.

"Oh my God, am I really _that_ pathetic?" she exclaims, then buries her face in her hands so she doesn't have to see Doctor Tom's look of condescending confusion. "No, I didn't mean--I wasn't talking about my issues about Leo. I was talking about--something else."

"Something else." She hears the rollers of his chair, then his footsteps as he comes around his desk, then the faint squeak of leather as he sits in the chair beside hers. When she looks up, he's watching her from far too close, and she leans back as far as she can. "Something Leo's death reminds you of?"

"No. Not the way you're thinking." Crossing her arms, she curses herself for being such a freaking clichee. "This isn't the first time we've had this conversation. The first time, it went...I did something. Something I shouldn't have, and you sent me back to fix it, and I _intended_ to, I really did, but now I'm realising that I did what I did so I wouldn't have to deal with talking about Leo. So now that we're talking about Leo again..." She heaves a sigh and rolls her eyes. "I kind of want to do it again. What I did to avoid the subject the first time."

"'Repetition comforts me for a time, then closes in.'" He gives her a smile, one of the genuinely gentle ones that Erica only started getting after she'd been in therapy for a good six months. "Mason Cooley. Well, whatever it was you did, you seem to understand the motives behind your actions. Now the challenge is to address the issues behind those motives."

Erica nods unhappily. "Leo."

"Leo." He reaches out and covers her hand with his, just for a moment, before standing and returning to his seat behind his desk.

Her hand is cold when his is gone.

* * *

When she comes back to the present--to her apartment, which is a relief--it's only a few hours later, even though she spent almost a week in the past. She spends the next hour curled up on her couch, sobbing, her old memories of Leo in the hospital, the morgue, the funeral home now fresh and new and not nearly different enough.

When the knock comes at her door, she forces herself to get up, to grab a box of tissues and swipe at her face, to call shakily, "Just a second!" while she glances at the mirror and resigns herself to terrifying whoever it is with her bird-nest hair and snotty nose.

But when she opens the door, Doctor Tom just looks at her with soft eyes and says, "'For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.'"

Part of her wants to shut the door in his face; another, larger part makes her snuffle out a wry laugh. "Who said that?"

He shrugs, smiling that gentle smile again. "I don't know, exactly. It's from the Bible."

"Oh." The fact of him--_him_, Doctor Tom, walking dictionary of quotable quotes--being unable to make a specific attribution strikes her as overwhelmingly, ridiculously sad. She feels her face crumple, her eyes welling up until he's a dark blur on the other side of the threshold; reaching around the door to the key stand, she gropes blindly for the tissue box, only to find it empty. It just makes her tears spill over faster, hot and messy.

"Hey, hey." Blurry Doctor Tom goes even more blurry with motion, then extends a blobby arm and presses something into her hand: his handkerchief, the cloth soft and fine. Blubbering a thank you, Erica presses it to her eyes, makes herself focus on the comforting feel of it soaking up her tears, and tries really, really hard not to use it anywhere under her nose.

All things considered, it doesn't take her long to get herself back under control, more or less. She's dabbing gingerly at the raw corners of her eyes--paying too much attention to the task because she feels exposed and sheepish and doesn't want to look at Doctor Tom--when she notices a blotch of colour on the handkerchief, a bright smudge on the white fabric. "Oh my God, am I--am I bleeding?" she blurts out, patting her face with her bare hand, wondering if it's possible to cry hard enough to draw blood. "I'm so sorry, I--I think I stained your--"

But then she looks at the smudge again, sees that it's too pink to be blood, sees how it's not fresh, but has a washed-in look. With dawning horror, she blinks up at Doctor Tom--and his eyes are still soft, and his smile is still gentle, but he's watching her with the satisfied glimmer he always has at the end of a particularly successful session. "You did stain my handkerchief," he affirms matter-of-factly, reaching out and plucking it from her hands, folding it so the lipstick stain is clearly visible. "I washed it twice while you were gone, and look: the colour hasn't faded much at all. Isn't lipstick supposed to be non-transferable these days?"

Erica stares. "But you sent me _back_," she says finally, sounding maybe just a little bit hysterical. "And I didn't kiss you the second time! How--?"

"And then I sent you back to deal with Leo, and then you returned to the present. You always have to return to the present, Erica." Without looking away from her, he tucks the handkerchief neatly into his pocket. "If you didn't--well, what would be the point?"

She looks back at him, her exhausted brain frying itself even more as it tries--out of embarrassment, out of confusion, out of sheer bloody-mindedness--to find a way to refute his logic. But it's too neat, too simple, too _right_; and besides, she has almost a year of time travel under her belt now, travel that does nothing but corroborate his statement. Finally, in the face of all that--and his steady gaze, warm and certain, all his attention fixed on her--she shakes her head helplessly and says, "Would you...do you want some tea? Or coffee?"

And Doctor Tom grins. "Tea would be great."

So Erica steps aside to let him in, closes the door and goes to put the kettle on.

End.


End file.
